How Has America Become Democratic

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A Democracy is a form of government in which eligible citizens may participate equally either directly by voting for the passing or rejecting of laws or running for office themselves, or indirectly through elected representatives. The United States has become more democratic from 1607-1900. The Democratic Party was formed in 1792, when supporters of Thomas Jefferson began using the name Republicans, or Jeffersonian Republicans, to emphasize its anti-aristocratic policies. It adopted its present name during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s. In the 1840s and '50s, the party was in conflict over extending slavery to the Western territories. Southern Democrats insisted on protecting slavery in all the territories while many Northern Democrats resisted. The party split over the slavery issue in 1860 at its Presidential convention in Charleston, South Carolina. The Gilded Age politics, called the Third Party System, was characterized by intense competition between the two parties, with minor parties coming and going, especially on issues of concern to prohibitionists, labor unions and farmers. The Emancipation Proclamation issued on 1863 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding The Jim Crow laws were racial segregation laws enacted after the Reconstruction period in Southern United States, at state and local levels, and which continued in force until 1965, which mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. The South during the Reconstruction period introduced a new set of significant challenges. Jacksonian Democracy refers to the legal political philosophy of United States President Andrew Jackson and his supporters. Jackson's policies followed in the footsteps of

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